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At Select Fitness, plate-loaded weight machines clink and chime as a sea of runners pound out miles on treadmills equipped with personal LCD TVs. The cardio deck’s assortment of ellipticals, summit trainers, and cycling machines help carve off calories while free weight workouts define muscles. Along with a slate of aerobic and group fitness classes, including ripped, yoga, and kickboxing, members take advantage of the gym’s basketball court and cardio theater as well as creature comforts including a juice bar and full service day care center. Personal trainers are also available to provide clients with necessary tools for toning the body, shedding fat, and how to maintain their physique.

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title: '4Ever Fit Studio '
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html_text: A lifelong athlete, Terra Michelle Frost is no stranger to pushing her body to its limits. So when she gained close to 50 pounds with each of her two pregnancies, she decided to take on the challenge of getting back to her pre-baby weight. Terra accomplished this formidable task—twice—and now she uses her own experience slimming down to lead a variety of entertaining fitness classes.

Motivation is the name of the game at Charleston's St Andrews Family Fitness Plus.
When you're out and about in the area, you'll love that this gym has a restaurant to take care of any last minute hunger.
With its kid-friendly vibe, this gym is a great spot for families.
Create a team around you to help support your fitness goals. That's why their personal trainers could be the perfect fit for you.
Sign up for a Zumba class and join an easy-to-follow and high-intensity dance party.
Be prepared for an intense workout when you attend St Andrews Family Fitness Plus' barre yoga classes.
Indulge in a total body workout with one of these kickboxing classes and leave feeling and looking your best.
Surprise yourself with the level of fitness you'll achieve when you start training in MMA with one of their fabulous instructors.
If you're looking for the ultimate spinning class, check out St Andrews Family Fitness Plus.
It's easy for your workout to become complacent, that's why you should consider circuit training!
When you workout here, you can take advantage of the great aerobics offered onsite.
Work out into a new level of fitness with the cross fit program offered here.
Parking is plentiful, so visitors can feel free to bring their vehicles.

At Island Fitness Studio, bodies learn to defy physics, becoming at once firm and bendable. That's because the instructors specialize in tightening cores and enhancing reach. Their group Pilates, yoga, and Beyond Barre sessions coach muscles in the art of balance, extending limbs upward during hot Vinyasa sequences and leveraging focused, dance-inspired stretches against a ballet barre. Other classes, such as TRX suspension training and spinning, complement these flexing routines with resistance and cardio workouts.
Power Pilates–certified teachers also lead private apparatus sessions. They familiarize clients with the Reformer, Tower, Wunda Chair, and other props, all of which develop patrons' posture and strength more safely than fusing steel beams to their skeletons. Regardless of the number of people involved in a lesson, the guides personalize their approach to suit varying goals and fitness levels. The studio can even furnish advanced students with Power Pilates and Beyond Barre certifications.

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title: Core Essentials Pilates
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html_text: Since 2004, the staff at Core Essentials Pilates has relished the opportunity to watch students master the precise movements of Pilates, which bring balance, flexibility, and strength to the body. Mat- and equipment-based classes use the body's own resistance to toughen moves instead of resistance borrowed from bankrupt magnets. Classes take place seven days a week, and the staff recommends that patrons take part in two-three sessions per week for optimal results.

With a new location at Folly Rd., Barre Evolution Method helps guests in a safe and fast way to tone their arms, thighs, glutes, and abs as well as lift seats with exercises using a ballet barre. Instructors are trained on a wide variety of techniques, allowing for an experience that varies with every visit. Offering classes that cater to all fitness levels, instructors focus their attention on correct posture and alignment during the low-impact workouts. Instructors provide special attention for prenatal students and students with injuries. Supervision is available at the Mt. Pleasant location for participants’ children during select classes.

Groupon Guide

I started taking Pilates classes three years ago. The impetus came when I tried to pick up my roommate’s cat, felt a stab of pain in my lower back, and couldn’t walk for 24 hours. (To be fair, the cat was chubby.)I was fine after a few days, but I decided that I needed to take up a back-strengthening type of exercise. The problem was, I’ve never been particularly fit. I struggled to bench press the unweighted bar in high school PE, I still have nightmares about the mile run, and, if you recall, I threw my back out at age 22. But I went to Pilates anyway. Then, I actually kept going. I’m proud to say that over the past three years, I’ve gotten a lot stronger, and I’ve also learned some interesting facts about exercise and the body. For example:1. Spines aren't like pillars. They're curvy and alive.Everyone has a natural curve in their lower back. If you lie down casually on a Pilates mat, without pushing your spine into the mat, there’s a gap between your back and the ground—yes, even for people with good posture who “sit up straight.”Spines are bendy, too. Anyone who’s picked something up off the floor knows that, but you really feel it during exercises like the rollup. A lot of teachers, during that movement, tell you to peel your spine off the floor “one vertebra at a time,” or to pretend that you’re wearing a striped shirt and rolling up stripe by stripe. That move in particular makes me conscious of how the spine really works.2. There are bones in your butt.They’re called “sitz bones,” and they’re little nubs that stick out of your pelvis. In a more accurate world, they would be called butt antlers. They’re not usually noticeable, as they’re completely covered by booty flesh. That doesn’t mean you can’t find them, though. My Pilates teachers have taught me that when you sit up straight, all of your weight sits on top of your sitz bones, and you can feel them pressing into the floor a little. It’s not uncomfortable, but it is a reminder that your skeleton is full of surprises. 3. Just thinking about your pelvis can improve your alignment ... and creep you out.When you’re lying down, Pilates teachers tell you to think of your pelvis like a bowl. When you tilt it forward, you’re spilling the bowl’s contents towards your feet. (This feels like sticking your butt out.) When you’re tilting it backwards, the bowl spills towards your face. (This feels like pushing your lower back into the ground.) “Neutral pelvis” is the place halfway in between, and feels roughly effortless. Just thinking about my pelvis in these terms has improved my posture. It also freaks me out a little. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and think, “There’s a pelvis inside of me.” This may be a personal problem.4. Toning your whole core takes more than sit-ups.When I first started Pilates, the movements felt crazy. There’s a lot of lying on your side, waving your legs around, and holding one-legged bridge poses. I missed sit-ups. You can’t fall over during a sit-up, and I was unsure what these weird exercises did that sit-ups didn’t.The thing is, Pilates isn’t just supposed to make your abs look six-pack-y. It’s meant to strengthen your whole core—your back muscles, your upper and lower abs, and your obliques. Basically, any muscle in the middle of the body that stabilizes you when you fall (or lean over really far on purpose). Accessing all these muscle groups requires some weird motions.5. Your body can learn ... but it can't learn everything.Until I took Pilates, I never appreciated the fact that my body can learn things just like my brain. For instance, there’s an exercise called The Hundred. It looks like this:It’s a staple—you’d be hard-pressed to find a Pilates class that skips this one—and at first, my face turned purple doing the beginners’ modification with bent knees. I couldn’t imagine doing the advanced version with extended legs. And then, slowly, over time … I worked up to it. I felt like I had developed a superpower.There are some things I still can’t do, though. Like sit up straight, with my legs straight out in front of me. Nope! I can only sit up straight when I’m cross-legged, and at this point, I’m pretty sure it’s just how my body is wired. As my Pilates teachers say soothingly at almost every class, “Everyone’s body is different.” Read more about bendy exercise trends:Five Reasons Not to Fear the Pilates ReformerIt might look like it's going to hurt you, but it just wants to build your core strength.Yes, Yoga is a SportAnd Gianna Purcell is the reigning champion. Here’s how she worked her way to the top.

I’m a mat Pilates devotee, but the Pilates Reformer has always intimidated me. It looks like a gigantic version of a dentist’s tool, and its backstory doesn’t make it any cuter—Joseph Pilates invented it, along with his eponymous workout system, in prison.Kyle Seguin, the owner of Chicago’s One Hundred Fitness, explained that Pilates, who was a German citizen, was interned in Britain during World War I. To build his first Reformer, “he originally used bedsprings [from an internment-camp cot]. He just took apart a bed and used those springs.”Today’s Reformers are more sophisticated: the four in Kyle’s studio are sleek, Stott-brand machines. And as a Stott-certified trainer with more than 10 years of experience, Kyle was the perfect person to convince me that they aren’t that scary. His best reasons, below:It’s just a frame and six key parts.The Reformer is more approachable when you can name its components. According to Kyle, they are: The footbar: Your feet rest here, though not for every move. The carriage: It rolls back and forth along the tracks, and it’s where the bulk of your weight usually sits. The straps: They end in stirrups, which you can loop around your hands or feet. The longbox: This is a leather-wrapped box that you can sit on, or otherwise use as a prop. The springs: They’re hard to see in this picture, but they connect to the carriage and the footbar end of the frame. They add resistance to Reformer exercises. The shoulder rests: These two nubs on the carriage often sit right above your shoulders, and your neck rests between them. As with the footbar, this isn’t true for every move.Reformers are better than gravity at adding resistance.In mat Pilates, all the resistance comes from gravity—which means that there’s only real resistance against upward movements. (Unless, of course, you’re doing Pilates underwater or in quicksand.)The Reformer’s straps and springs are more versatile than gravity, though. Not only can they resist movements in all directions, but, as Kyle put it, “[they] can work with you or against you.” That means they can also provide support during tougher exercises, offsetting the effects of gravity.Even though Reformers don’t have seat belts, people almost never fall off.It’s true that a Reformer isn’t a totally stable surface. The carriage’s ability to roll back and forth on its tracks tests your balance and strengthens your core. “People have compared [Reformer Pilates] to surfing, because there’s the instability component,” Kyle said.
Still, pratfalls are basically impossible. The worst Kyle has seen is “clients who kind of fall and catch themselves on the equipment,” but there have only been a couple. Moves like these Reformer-based lunges definitely take balance, but classes ramp up slowly so that you’re never out of your depth.Reformers let you jump horizontally.This is not a drill. If you fit a jump board onto the footbar and lie on the carriage with your feet pointing toward the board, you can simulate jumping while lying down. (Check out a video of what that looks like here, with a vaguely industrial soundtrack.) Reformers, in other words, are miniature gyms that work for cardio workouts as well as full-body toning. Maybe the next generation will have built-in locker rooms?Anyone can use them. “Pilates is appropriate for all different ages and all different skill levels,” Kyle said. He knows this from experience: he’s taught everyone from child ballerinas to clients in their late 70s trying to improve their balance.Photos by Andrew Nawrocki, Groupon